Education

Based on the results of MDRC's latest evaluation, Career Academies should be getting a lot more attention. As described by MDRC, Career Academies:

Typically serv[e] between 150 and 200 students from grades 9 or 10 through grade 12 [and] are defined by three distinguishing features: (1) they are organized as small learning communities to create a more supportive, personalized learning environment; (2) they combine academic and career and technical curricula around a career theme to enrich teaching and learning; and (3) they establish partnerships with local employers to provide career awareness and work-based learning opportunities for students.

The new MDRC evaluation looks at the relatively long-term--eight years after high-school graduation--results of Career Academies, finding:

• The Career Academies produced sustained earnings gains that averaged 11 percent (or $2,088) more per year for Academy group members than for individuals in the non-Academy group — a $16,704 boost in total earnings over the eight years of follow-up (in 2006 dollars).
• These labor market impacts were concentrated among young men, a group that has experienced a severe decline in real earnings in recent years. Through a combination of increased wages, hours worked, and employment stability, real earnings for young men in the Academy group increased by $3,731 (17 percent) per year — or nearly $30,000 over eight years.
• Overall, the Career Academies served as viable pathways to a range of postsecondary education opportunities, but they do not appear to have been more effective than options available to the non-Academy group. More than 90 percent of both groups graduated from high school or received a General Educational Development (GED) certificate, and half completed a postsecondary credential.
• The Career Academies produced an increase in the percentage of young people living independently with children and a spouse or partner. Young men also experienced positive impacts on marriage and being custodial parents.

The only really disappointing finding is the lack of results for young women. It's not clear from evaluation why women didn't benefit:

.... The evaluation did not find evidence that the Career Academy experience was systematically different for young women than for young men. Nor does it appear that the Career Academies had systematically different impacts on the high school experiences of young women and young men. One hypothesis, however, is that the lack of post-high school labor market impacts for young women may be an artifact of their somewhat shorter and more intermittent employment spells associated with having children or attending postsecondary education programs. This will be explored in nonexperimental analyses to be presented in a future paper.

Although reports have focused on employment and earnings gains for young men, the results on "family formation" are even more striking. Students who attended Career Academies were 13 percent more likely to be married and living with their spouse than non-attendees. Young men who attended academies were 33 percent more likely to be married and living with their spouse than male non-attendees.

Some conservative marriage promoters have argued that the correlation between marriage and earnings in the general population is evidence that marriage directly causes higher earnings. The Career Academies evaluation suggests that the casual link moves in the opposite direction, with higher earnings leading to more stable families.

If enacted into law, Senator Webb's legislation to expand GI Bill educational benefits for active duty veterans likely would be the most important progressive economic and social policy victory of the current session of Congress. The legislation would provide about $5 billion a year in educational benefits and income supplements to post-9/11 vets.

Webb's proposed expansion has received relatively little attention from advocates in the areas of education and training, youth, economic justice, and racial justice, even though the legislation would probably do more to help the constituencies these groups see themselves as representing than any other legislation likely to pass this year. African-Americans, who serve in the US Armed Forces at a rate far in excess of their share of the population, would benefit disproportionately from GI Bill expansion. About half of the active-duty force are 17-24 years old, and many of them serve relatively short stints in the military.

As a resolute anti-imperialist and opponent of many of our current and past military adventures, I wish we had a much smaller military, and that all of the billions going down the drain in Iraq were being used to better educate all Americans. But I'm also a pragmatist and populist, one who sees expanding the GI Bill as a step forward for economic and racial justice.

Kevin Carey at the Quick and the Ed and the Prospect's Ezra Klein seem to be talking past each other on education reform. I thought I'd try to clear things up a bit.

Here's Klein:

It would be good if we could really nail down what works in education. But my conclusion, increasingly, is that the best thing you could do for poor kids' educational prospects is increase their parents' economic prospects...Education reform is a piece of the war on poverty, but it isn't, by itself, a winning strategy.

And here's Carey:

So I'm just not sure who the other side of this debate about the all-encompassing power of education reform is supposed to be. The Prospect has published some persuasive arguments that education was over-valued during the 1990s as an economic curative by the likes of Robert Reich and many economists. But the value of education generally is distinct from the need for systemic educational improvement, particularly when some flaws in the public school system are so glaring. And it's not like Reich's overly narrow view of the needs of modern workers caused him to lead the war against the war on poverty. There are bad people in charge of that, and they've got plenty of other reasons to do so.

It seems like some progressives see the possibilities of educational improvement as a barrier to more comprehensive reforms, a mirage that distracts from the real journey. Are any other sustained, large-scale efforts to improve the lives of poor children regarded this way?

Klein's most likely referring to the innumerable conservatives who push education reform as the sole corrective to poverty and inequality and then do little about it. To conservatives, education reform is almost tantamount to picking yourself up by your bootstraps. When they bring it up, they more or less mean, "education is what you poor people need- so get off your duff and get one!"

Even centrists use education reform against liberals. To be sure, they differ from conservatives because actually do something about it. Still, they propose it as a substitute for more ambitious intervention in the economy, rather than as part of a package that could reduce poverty and inequality. Once again, liberal solutions get pushed off the table by education reform.

So while Carey knows about these "bad people," he doesn't seem to see that that's what liberals are responding to. That's probably not to his or his constituents' benefit. I wonder if more people like Carey took on bad-faith conservative arguments and denounced centrists who marginalize their allies' causes, education reform would make liberals much less jumpy.

From Inside Higher Ed, a recent article on college costs and veterans who're being shortchanged.

Fifty years from now, today’s soldiers won’t be telling their grandkids that their college bills were taken care of, said Patrick Campbell, legislative director for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA).

Nor, he argued, will they tell them about the $20,000, $30,000, even $40,000 enlistment bonus checks they cashed. “It’s not a good investment,” Campbell said of the military’s spending strategy. Nor does it promote wise investments on the part of those receiving. “What are you going to do” with the money, he asked. “You’re going to buy a flat-screen TV.”

A coalition of veterans’ groups, including IAVA and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, joined Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) on Capitol Hill Wednesday to advocate for a “GI Bill for the 21st Century.” Citing the lagging purchasing power of veterans’ educational benefits relative to increasing college costs – the American Association of State Colleges and Universities estimates that the $9,909 annual benefit for former active duty service members covers only about three-quarters of the average total cost of attendance at public four-year universities ($13,145) — veterans’ groups called for a dramatic re-envisioning of the current Montgomery GI Bill, passed in peacetime.

Get this- the Bush adminstration opposes the increase in educational benefits because they're worried that returning soldiers will, well, actually go to college.

A Department of Defense spokesman said Tuesday that the department’s position on dramatically boosting educational benefits has stayed the same. “The department is not against increasing education benefits,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington. “It’s about how to go about doing it. And the research shows that you have to be very careful about the tipping point of when a recruiting incentive may become a retention disincentive.”

Meanwhile, a VA study shows that veterans are employed less often than their peer groups and have trouble getting good jobs.

Too often, the promise of a college degree and job training, gateways to the American dream, isn't being realized. Part of the problem is that we don't do enough to help students succeed during and after their education, and many non-traditonal students (like laid-off workers) have trouble accessing it in the first place.

A new version of the Higher Education Act, which lays down the rules for some of biggest education and training programs, could go far in addressing these problems. Both the House and Senate have passed their version of the new Higher Education Act, and negotiators are ironing out the differences between them. Some important programs in the House version but not in the Senate version, however, may not make it into the final bill. For a quick summary of what's at stake, see this sign-on letter.

Everyone can help put these programs into action and make the promise of a college education real. You could contact Amy-Ellen Duke (aduke@clasp.org) to sign on your organization to the letter (the deadline is tomorrow at close of business). And you can call or email members of these House and Senate committees and ask them to support the new programs in the House bill.

The folks at Good Jobs First have put out a fascinating new report on Wal-Mart's strategy of challenging assessments of its property tax liability:

....

"Wal-Mart, a company with $350 billion in annual revenues and $11 billion in profits, drains vitally needed funds from communities by regularly challenging the valuation put on its properties by public officials," said Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First and principal author of the report. "When the company succeeds in one of these challenges, it diminishes the funds available to pay for education, police and fire protection, and other essential services provided by local governments."

Based on a large national sample of Wal-Mart stores and a review of all of its distribution centers open as of the beginning of 2005, Good Jobs First concludes that Wal-Mart has filed assessment challenges at more than one-third of its facilities around the country. At many facilities there have been appeals in multiple years. Overall, Good Jobs First estimates that the company has filed more than 2,100 property tax challenges nationwide.

"Wal-Mart's frequent poor-mouthing of its properties makes the company appear hypocritical," noted Good Jobs First executive director Greg LeRoy. "When it meets opposition to a new store, the company claims it will bring economic benefits to the community, which would normally be reflected in higher property values," LeRoy said. "Yet, in these assessment appeals the company routinely argues that the value of its properties has declined. Unwittingly, Wal-Mart appears to be confirming the argument often raised by neighborhood groups that the construction of one of the company's giant stores will reduce property values."

"These systematic property tax challenges are part of a larger pattern of state and local tax avoidance by Wal-Mart," Mattera stated. "They are consistent with the company's reported use of a real estate investment trust gimmick to dodge income taxes in many states. And they are consistent with the widespread property tax abatements, income tax credits and sales tax diversions that make up a large part of the more than $1.2 billion in economic development subsidies that Good Jobs First has documented in previous research on Wal-Mart," Mattera added. Good Jobs First's findings on development subsidies can be found at www.walmartsubsidywatch.org.

It occurs to me that we don't see as many muckraking reports like this coming from progressive orgs as we should. At least here inside the beltway, there's an argument to be made that progressive think tanks and advocacy orgs don't spend enough time and energy challenging unwise spending that subsidizes large corporations and the rich. The big battles against such spending tend to be defensive, and often are waged in response to conservative proposals to expand them (like estate tax repeal); less common are proactive attacks on long-standing subsidies. Conservatives seem to spend more time going after long-standing subsidies of the kind they don't like (albeit with mixed success as the Social Security battle demonstrates).

Some will argue that this is because conservatives only want to cut and never want to spend, in part because they favor the market over government, but this isn't really the case. As Dean Baker has shown, conservatives like government just as much as liberals. What makes them different is that they see government as a tool for helping the rich get richer, and the big get bigger.

A good idea from Massachusetts' Governor Deval Patrick:

Governor Deval Patrick plans to unveil a proposal today to make Massachusetts' community colleges, among the priciest in the nation, free to all high school graduates in the state by the year 2015, according to documents obtained by the Globe.

The proposal is the centerpiece of Patrick's vision for a "cradle to career" education system that would dramatically expand the concept of public education in Massachusetts.

The plan, which he will outline during commencement at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, would also provide preschool for all children, extend the school day and year, and guarantee two years of community college paid for by the state.